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The announcement yesterday of Ministerial and Overseas Investment Office approval of the sale of the bankrupt Crafar Farms to Chinese buyers is no surprise to the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA). The only surprise is that it took them so long to rubber stamp it. This was all supposed to be a done deal back in 2010 when it was supposed to be sold to the first lot of would be Chinese buyers. That all turned to custard because of an even greater of lack of good character than usual of the company’s principals, who are now facing serious criminal charges in Hong Kong (but nothing in New Zealand, which tells you a lot about the diligence of NZ’s “regulatory” authorities)..

Sale a “political hot
potato” prior to election

So it became not only an embarrassment but a political hot potato, one which exposed deep riftswithin National’s supporters and within the Government itself, at the highest levels. It was parked up out of sight until after the election. But it has still taken a further two months to find the cans of air freshener with which to mask the stink of what is yet another huge sale overseas of New Zealand’s comparative advantage in the global market – prime agricultural land (of which they ain’t making no more)..The lily is being gilded by the announcement that Landcorp will manage it on behalf of the Chinese buyers. Everyone knows that there is the world of difference between being the owner and the property manager. Ownership is power; owners make the decisions (including onselling it); owners get the profits. The lily is being further gilded by a number of conditions being attached to it (Labour set the precedent for this in regard to the equally controversial Shania Twain land purchases when it was in office). Conditions such as the buyers remaining of good character (this could be renamed the May Wang clause) and paying millions of dollars to various worthy causes. These should be taken with a well deserved grain of salt. Why? Two words – Kim Dotcom.

Prime Minister “disingenuous”

.The Prime Minister keeps issuing soothing noises about foreign land purchases only totaling around 1% of the total land area. He is being disingenuous. What is important is what percentage of the total area of productive land is foreign-owned. These statistics are no longer issued by the Overseas Investment Office but when they were, last decade, CAFCA calculated the figure at 7% - and it was never officially denied or disputed. We’ve seen no evidence of that figure having gone down, quite the opposite. Plus the PM is stressing quantity when, once again, the key factor is the quality of the land being flogged off overseas. Foreign buyers are cherry picking, not buying the rubbish (that’s left for the locals)..CAFCA stresses that the race of the buyers is irrelevant. Flogging the Crafar Farms overseas is reprehensible regardless of whether the foreign buyers are Chinese, Americans, British or Australians. Despite attempts to reorient the economy into other directions (finance companies, anyone?), New Zealand still remains an agricultural country. And we’re very good at it, which is why foreign buyers want to snap it up. CAFCA doesn’t carry any flag for Michael Fay’s rival bid. All we need say about him is that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. The opportunity to have the Crafar Farms genuinely stay in local hands was lost when the receivers rejected Landcorp’s bid to buy them (which gets the management contract as a consolation prize). The Prime Minister said in 2010, when controversy was raging about the original Chinese proposal to buy these farms; that he didn't want to see New Zealanders become tenants in our own land. A commendable sentiment, one with which CAFCA completely agrees. But yesterday’s decision by his Government ensures that is exactly what is happening..

Speaking at the opening of Coca Cola Amatil’s Christchurch bottling plant, group managing director Terry Davis called on the Government to consider “incentives” for food and beverage manufacturers (Press, 19/1/12; “Coca-Cola calls for incentives”). .Why? This is a very slippery slope. Why should the New Zealand taxpayer subsidise a gigantic transnational corporation such as Coca Cola, one for whom the $15m cost of the bottling plant would be what its American executives would refer to as “chump change”? Would they like breakfast in bed while they’re at it? And this is not even to raise the subject of whether Coca-Cola itself is a product worthy of any taxpayers’ dollars...The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) says that it simply adds insult to injury for the transnational corporations which dominate the NZ economy to demand that the New Zealand people pay them for the privilege of profiting from us. But don’t take our word for it. A decade ago when the Labour government gave taxpayers’ money to giant American transnational EDS National’s associate commerce spokesman called it “corporate welfare” (Press, 12/3/03). And who was that then obscure National MP? None other than John Key. It’s a rare day when CAFCA agrees with National but Key expressed our views exactly.

.Of course, once in power, Key became the transnationals’ biggest sugar daddy, as evidenced by the squalid Warner Brothers/ “The Hobbit” saga in 2010. What happened to calling it “corporate welfare”, Prime Minister?.In the US, individual states, counties and cities undercut each other to attract foreign investment, such as car assembly plants, with guaranteed union-free workplaces. Some US states have paid transnational corporations (TNCs) hundreds of millions of dollars to pick them. “You want our foreign investment? OK, then you’ll have to pay us to come there. And pay again for us to stay"..

What are the N.Z. numbers?

Of all cities in New Zealand, Christchurch should be the one most wary of offering “incentives” to transnational corporations. In December 2002 Pratt and Whitney, a huge US transnational, announced an $80 million expansion of its Christchurch Airport jet engine testing centre; yet, by March 2003, Christchurch’s then Mayor, Garry Moore, announced that the centre would close and move overseas, with all jobs lost, unless the Council put up $20 million of ratepayers’ money. Sir Angus Tait, chairman of Tait Electronics, put it most succinctly when he said: " …One could, a little unkindly, interpret it as Air New Zealand and Pratt and Whitney putting a gun to the city’s head, saying ‘build this new building or we’ll go elsewhere’" (Press, 1/3/03)..

Don’t worry about the much maligned solo mothers and other beneficiaries who are regularly attacked and subjected to draconian measures. They’re not remotely in the same league. It’s the transnational corporations who are the country’s biggest bludgers. They suck billions of dollars in profits out of this country every year, so they can well afford to pay their own way (whatever happened to “market forces”?). If anything, they should be paying the NZ people for the privilege of being allowed to operate here.

The Christchurch rebuild has been ground to a
halt by transnational insurance companies and their offshore reinsurers doing
SFA

The Government announced this week that it has no plans to help Ansvar Insurance customers left in the lurch by their insurer’s December 31st exit from the New Zealand insurance market. That means that those unable to get new house insurance before their existing policies expire (January, in some cases) will be uninsured in further quakes and ineligible for Earthquake Commission support. And the insurance companies are not offering any new insurance coverage in Canterbury until further notice. So, this is an appalling situation for these people to be left in, through no fault of their own..Ansvar’s desertion follows December’s announcement that IAG is buying AMI Insurance’s “good business” but leaving the Crown to deal with AMI’s “bad business”, namely $1.8 billion of Canterbury earthquake claims. That is a perfect illustration of the phrase “to privatise the profits but socialise the losses”. So, a transnational corporation that is in the business of calculating risk, managing risk and profiting handsomely from risk, doesn’t want a bar of dealing with the negative consequences of that risk..

Insurance market is
broken: “holding the country to ransom”

CAFCA had no objection – particularly as a Christchurch-based organisation - when the Government agreed to underwrite AMI, back in April, rather than see it go bust, as a number of smaller insurance companies had done as a direct result of the earthquakes. But it needed to go further than just underwriting AMI and then meekly taking on that company’s “bad business” while leaving IAG to laugh all the way to the foreign-owned bank..It is what the Government is not doing that is the problem. The Christchurch rebuild has been ground to a halt by transnational insurance companies and their offshore reinsurers doing SFA. This is nothing less than a capital strike by corporations that have creamed it big time for as long as Cantabrians, whether homeowners or businesses, have been paying insurance. Imagine the uproar if this was a labour strike. When you get prominent business mouthpieces urging the Government to step in because the insurance market is broken, and accusing the insurance companies of holding the country to ransom, you know that those companies have achieved the difficult task of pissing off everyone. Imagine what the Government would be doing if it was unions “holding the country to ransom”. But the Government is doing nothing, preferring to leave it to “the market” – which means stalemate. The widely backed call is for the Government to get back into insurance, to deal with problems that the private insurers can’t or won’t handle. After all that’s why State Insurance was founded – and that’s another example of a former public asset that was stupidly privatised (the name has been kept, because the word “State” gives credibility to a foreign-owned private insurance company).

Doing nothing, but
leaving it to “the market”

.

CAFCA backs the call for the Government to get back into the insurance business, as the insurer of last resort and to most effectively respond to an unprecedented catastrophe, made worse by the December quakes. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The Government has equipped the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority with emergency powers – equally, it needs to wield some big stick in the insurance market..